Way better and more interesting than the current Standard mono/dual color borefest, IMO.
I switched to Commander after it became apparent that monocolor would dominate Theros Standard.
Do you mean the strategies available to the decks now aren't interesting, or just that tapping lands that produce only one kind of mana somehow reduces your enjoyment of the game?
Incidentally, I agree that devotion.dec isn't where I want to be, but I also think that'll change as the card pool broadens.
Was talking to a couple of guys at my LGS and they were waxing nostalgic for, I kid you not, Onslaught-Mirrodin standard. So always keep 2 things in mind: nostalgia can make just about anything seem like the good ol' days, and things can ALWAYS be worse.
Last fun and interesting format I think we had, was the tail end of Alara-Zendikar. I have not fully enjoyed a format since.
There were some color combinations that were just really strong and everything seemed to keep everything else in check, without having to breed a million different possible decks to win with. Instead there was a large enough selection where players could have some options, but small enough not to feel like you are just trying to draw better than your opponent.
It was such a great format because whenever you sat down at the table to play you wouldn't really know what to expect. There were RUG, BUG, Junk, Dega, American, Naya, Jund, Esper, Bant, Grixis, 4-color, and 5-color strategies.
Was talking to a couple of guys at my LGS and they were waxing nostalgic for, I kid you not, Onslaught-Mirrodin standard. So always keep 2 things in mind: nostalgia can make just about anything seem like the good ol' days, and things can ALWAYS be worse.
Actually, Skullclamp aside, Onslaught-Mirrodin wasn't really problematic. Sure, Affinity was rather strong, but there were decent strategies from the Onslaught block that could keep some pace with it. The real issue happened when Onslaught rotated out and we had Kamigawa, an underpowered block, providing the only real check to Affinity.
IMO, this was one of the best and most diverse standard formats ever. I'm not a huge standard fan and only started played serious competitive magic (mostly limited) since M10 so my opinion may not be the most valid, but let me explain why I think this was the best.
Diversity in decks and card pool.
The most amount of archetypes were possible in this format. With an amazing mana base, ramp, reanimator + self/mill, and a diverse and deep selection of aggro and control cards, you literally could build anything.
Most of my experience with this format was for Innistrad Block, M13 and RTR, which was when it was most diverse. When GTC, DGM and M14 came out, the metagame was still healthy, but definitely started to settle at specific decks.
When RTR came out, there was a new top dog every single week.
Here's a list of decks that had either won a tourney or had been considered Tier 1 at one point of that standard. Zombies (Jund, BG, BR<-which was the best deck before GTC), Reanimator (frites - 4 color BGRW, Junk, BUG, Human), Junk Tokens, Control (Esper - Superfriends and Solar Flare, America, UW, Bant), Midrange (America, UW, Jund, Naya, Dark Naya), Aggro (Naya, GW, RDW), even 5 color with Omniscience. The list goes on and on.
A quick summary of decks for the rest of the format.
GTC
BTE - birthed Naya Humans (blitz)
Boros Reckoner - Anything America (flash, control) along with naya and Aristocrats
Shocklands - Gave Jund a smooth manabase
DGM
Voice - Made Junk decks extremely good while punishing flash decks.
This is where innovation slowed down and it was just upgrades to existing decks. From here on to M14 Junk and Jund had risen to be the 2 dominating decks of the format. It was here where the format finally became stagnant. You can still play plenty of decks though because they were still able to compete.
Major complaint of the format - Thragtusk
While thragtusk was everywhere, it allowed so many strategies to be viable. Aggro, Midrange, Control, Ramp and Reanimator all featured Thragtusk. By the end of RTR standard, where BR Zombies were the king for the last few weeks, aggro had been so good that Thragtusk made those games fair. Without Thragtusk, I believe the format would've been mono BR aggro.
Perfect mana bases, a deep and diverse card pool, 4 large sets, the presence of Thragtusk and Farseek contributed to one of the most diverse and balanced standard formats ever.
Do you mean the strategies available to the decks now aren't interesting, or just that tapping lands that produce only one kind of mana somehow reduces your enjoyment of the game?
Incidentally, I agree that devotion.dec isn't where I want to be, but I also think that'll change as the card pool broadens.
I think this is the major problem people are having. They are fondly remember post-Gatecrash, which adittedly saw an uptick in viable decks. They are unfairly comparing this standard so far to the a season with an larger cardpool-and forgetting how strong Junk and Jund were after DGM and pre-M14.
I will say that I'm enjoying playing against and with Devotion less and less as the weeks go by. I'm hoping that BNG doesn't add *too* much power to the decks, as the mechanic is just natively strong already. What I hope is that it adds interesting options for the archetype, where building the decks isn't more or less jamming everything with multiple mana symbols into the deck.
I also hope it adds some better options for going into multicolor. People who think the scrys is all we need(As great as I personally think they are) are woefully wrong. The mana base is there already, it's the options that are truly lacking. A deck with Scry lands will be significantly better than the same deck without, but scrys are not a problem when discussing the mana base. The problem is that there a few strong options in many color combinations to really make a cohesive deck.
This exactly sums up why people got so sick and tired of Thragtusk. It wasn't unbeatable, but it was so splashable and so universally good that every possible deck jammed it in, and with a mana base that good, they wouldn't have a reason not to. When a UWR deck splashes a fourth color for it, you know it's #$%&ing everywhere.
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Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Ooooh, good old 'Clamp. The short-lived "Elf and Nail" must be one of the coolest Type 2 decks ever. Sure I feel nostalgia for that time, but I guess having Tier 1 G-W control decks that needed to play 4 Oxidize and 4 Viridian Shaman maindeck speaks volumes about the degeneracy of the format. Skullclamp was so sick that the two Darksteel swords, which we all now know how amazing they are, weren't even thought to be playable at the time. I wasn't playing when Caw Blade was around and I have heard it is the most dominant Type 2 deck ever, but it wouldn't stand a chance against pre-bans Affinity.
Affinity literally would not be able to beat turn 3 Batterskull. Creatures 12 years ago were pretty bad compared to how they are now, or SfM. And against the literal most broken standard deck of all time, TwinBlade? Affinity player wouldn't even know what hit them...
Hell, Naya Blitz from ISD/RTR is probably a full turn faster than affinity.
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We're going off-topic here, but Affinity would literally be able to beat turn 3 Batterskull. It could Shrapnel Blast the token or it could wait 1-2 turns and combo-kill with Disciple of the Vault and/or sacing Ravager to Ornithopter and flying over. Plus you could chump with Worker/Ornithopter/Frogmite and sac to Ravager so that the lifelink ability of Batterskull fizzled. You could even trade with Myr Enforcer. All that while drawing a million cards with Skullclamp and Thoughtcasts.
This is from a 2004 SCG article:
You say Naya Blitz is a full turn faster than Affinity, so that means Naya Blitz could kill on turn 2 and consistently on turn 3, which I doubt it could. I haven't heard of the TwinBlade deck so can't speak about that, but yeah, Affinity could certainly lose against a fast combo deck. So I guess the Tolarian Academy deck would beat both Affinity and Caw Blade in the battle of Standard monsters
No worries about going off topic ;). The whole purpose of me making this thread was because I was just curious of Standard outside of RTR-THS (with the most recent Standard rotation being that of Innistrad-RTR).
Skullclamp was banned a mere 4 months after releasing IIRC. And then EVERY deck was playing 4 clamp. Affinity without clamp can't stand a chance against most of the teir 1 decks standard has seen. Affinity was not a turn 3 deck or even turn 4 consistently. Naya blitz had a fairly consistent turn 4 kill, with the not-so-uncommon turn 3 KILLS.
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Skullclamp was banned a mere 4 months after releasing IIRC. And then EVERY deck was playing 4 clamp. Affinity without clamp can't stand a chance against most of the teir 1 decks standard has seen. Affinity was not a turn 3 deck or even turn 4 consistently. Naya blitz had a fairly consistent turn 4 kill, with the not-so-uncommon turn 3 KILLS.
Apples to oranges, similar but not quiet the same. Years down the line, better cards will show up that outshine naya blitz. Similar to how affinity was a very strong deck for its time and outshines previous top tier decks for its time.
You say Naya Blitz is a full turn faster than Affinity, so that means Naya Blitz could kill on turn 2 and consistently on turn 3, which I doubt it could. I haven't heard of the TwinBlade deck so can't speak about that, but yeah, Affinity could certainly lose against a fast combo deck. So I guess the Tolarian Academy deck would beat both Affinity and Caw Blade in the battle of Standard monsters
Caw-Blade has a shot against Academy in that it has some decent counterspells (including Spell Pierce, which is relevant against every card in Academy). But if we consider sideboards, Caw-Blade is perfectly capable of bringing in 4x Leyline of Sanctity, which cuts off Academy's win condition entirely.
Caw-Blade has a shot against Academy in that it has some decent counterspells (including Spell Pierce, which is relevant against every card in Academy). But if we consider sideboards, Caw-Blade is perfectly capable of bringing in 4x Leyline of Sanctity, which cuts off Academy's win condition entirely.
I'm sure academy would have had a specific SB plan against leyline after SB.
Also looking at the final lists before Tolarian got banned in Standard, the deck ran 1 capsize MD and 2 more in the board.
Ok yes forgot about academy cuz I didn't play then, though a good hand from twinblade (especially with dispel) could race the combo, but academy really was WAY broken
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Better and has more interaction than the current standard IMO. I think the idea of just dropping creatures early and have them sit like scaredy ducks to build up devotion and discourage trading in combat is ultra boring.
other notable mentions fall to sphinx's rev, angel of serenity, garruk primal hunter, huntmaster of the fells, deathrite shaman, acidic slime, terminus, tamiyo.
it was a fun format with popular decks, high attendance tournaments, and no dominate deck for too long with the light exception being junk rites for a few weeks.
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currently playing:
legacy: Doomsday, Dredge, BUG (shard less and still)
modern: storm, woo dredge, U-tron
EDH: maelstrom wanderer, Gisela, krenko, lazav, sharrum, sheoldred/xiahou dun, norin the wary, Thrax, Mimeoplasm, GW legends
I'm not sure why CawBlade is so overrated here, it's really slow deck and can be disrupted easily. Affinity even without Skullclamp is a force - t3 win is common.
If we go back in time there were some really fast (and suicidal) decks powered by Dark Ritual and Necropotence that were playing also tons of land destruction.
It doesn't matter how powerful the deck is, it matters what the cards around it are like. Caw-blade was many times more powerful than anything around it, so that's all people played. It wasn't easy to disrupt, and had access to cards that are now legacy format staples. Even when Jace and Stoneforge were banned it was still a deck, so I don't know how you figure it was overrated.
other notable mentions fall to sphinx's rev, angel of serenity, garruk primal hunter, huntmaster of the fells, deathrite shaman, acidic slime, terminus, tamiyo.
it was a fun format with popular decks, high attendance tournaments, and no dominate deck for too long with the light exception being junk rites for a few weeks.
Was the most skill intensive card in the format
Do you mean the strategies available to the decks now aren't interesting, or just that tapping lands that produce only one kind of mana somehow reduces your enjoyment of the game?
Incidentally, I agree that devotion.dec isn't where I want to be, but I also think that'll change as the card pool broadens.
There were some color combinations that were just really strong and everything seemed to keep everything else in check, without having to breed a million different possible decks to win with. Instead there was a large enough selection where players could have some options, but small enough not to feel like you are just trying to draw better than your opponent.
I'd heard that it was great and very skill rewarding as long as you could afford to buy a CawBlade deck.
Over all the meta was great. You could literally play anything you wanted. Before Burning Earth was printed I was running an American midrange deck that splashed green for Huntmaster of the Fells, Thragtusk, and a Garruk Relentless.
It was such a great format because whenever you sat down at the table to play you wouldn't really know what to expect. There were RUG, BUG, Junk, Dega, American, Naya, Jund, Esper, Bant, Grixis, 4-color, and 5-color strategies.
It was amazing...
Actually, Skullclamp aside, Onslaught-Mirrodin wasn't really problematic. Sure, Affinity was rather strong, but there were decent strategies from the Onslaught block that could keep some pace with it. The real issue happened when Onslaught rotated out and we had Kamigawa, an underpowered block, providing the only real check to Affinity.
Diversity in decks and card pool.
The most amount of archetypes were possible in this format. With an amazing mana base, ramp, reanimator + self/mill, and a diverse and deep selection of aggro and control cards, you literally could build anything.
Most of my experience with this format was for Innistrad Block, M13 and RTR, which was when it was most diverse. When GTC, DGM and M14 came out, the metagame was still healthy, but definitely started to settle at specific decks.
When RTR came out, there was a new top dog every single week.
Here's a list of decks that had either won a tourney or had been considered Tier 1 at one point of that standard. Zombies (Jund, BG, BR<-which was the best deck before GTC), Reanimator (frites - 4 color BGRW, Junk, BUG, Human), Junk Tokens, Control (Esper - Superfriends and Solar Flare, America, UW, Bant), Midrange (America, UW, Jund, Naya, Dark Naya), Aggro (Naya, GW, RDW), even 5 color with Omniscience. The list goes on and on.
A quick summary of decks for the rest of the format.
GTC
BTE - birthed Naya Humans (blitz)
Boros Reckoner - Anything America (flash, control) along with naya and Aristocrats
Shocklands - Gave Jund a smooth manabase
DGM
Voice - Made Junk decks extremely good while punishing flash decks.
This is where innovation slowed down and it was just upgrades to existing decks. From here on to M14 Junk and Jund had risen to be the 2 dominating decks of the format. It was here where the format finally became stagnant. You can still play plenty of decks though because they were still able to compete.
Major complaint of the format - Thragtusk
While thragtusk was everywhere, it allowed so many strategies to be viable. Aggro, Midrange, Control, Ramp and Reanimator all featured Thragtusk. By the end of RTR standard, where BR Zombies were the king for the last few weeks, aggro had been so good that Thragtusk made those games fair. Without Thragtusk, I believe the format would've been mono BR aggro.
Perfect mana bases, a deep and diverse card pool, 4 large sets, the presence of Thragtusk and Farseek contributed to one of the most diverse and balanced standard formats ever.
I think this is the major problem people are having. They are fondly remember post-Gatecrash, which adittedly saw an uptick in viable decks. They are unfairly comparing this standard so far to the a season with an larger cardpool-and forgetting how strong Junk and Jund were after DGM and pre-M14.
I will say that I'm enjoying playing against and with Devotion less and less as the weeks go by. I'm hoping that BNG doesn't add *too* much power to the decks, as the mechanic is just natively strong already. What I hope is that it adds interesting options for the archetype, where building the decks isn't more or less jamming everything with multiple mana symbols into the deck.
I also hope it adds some better options for going into multicolor. People who think the scrys is all we need(As great as I personally think they are) are woefully wrong. The mana base is there already, it's the options that are truly lacking. A deck with Scry lands will be significantly better than the same deck without, but scrys are not a problem when discussing the mana base. The problem is that there a few strong options in many color combinations to really make a cohesive deck.
This exactly sums up why people got so sick and tired of Thragtusk. It wasn't unbeatable, but it was so splashable and so universally good that every possible deck jammed it in, and with a mana base that good, they wouldn't have a reason not to. When a UWR deck splashes a fourth color for it, you know it's #$%&ing everywhere.
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Doomsdayin'
Affinity literally would not be able to beat turn 3 Batterskull. Creatures 12 years ago were pretty bad compared to how they are now, or SfM. And against the literal most broken standard deck of all time, TwinBlade? Affinity player wouldn't even know what hit them...
Hell, Naya Blitz from ISD/RTR is probably a full turn faster than affinity.
Thanks to Rivenor for the signature and XenoNinja for the Avi!
Quotes:
No worries about going off topic ;). The whole purpose of me making this thread was because I was just curious of Standard outside of RTR-THS (with the most recent Standard rotation being that of Innistrad-RTR).
Imagine winning with Laboratory Maniac
Thanks to Rivenor for the signature and XenoNinja for the Avi!
Quotes:
Apples to oranges, similar but not quiet the same. Years down the line, better cards will show up that outshine naya blitz. Similar to how affinity was a very strong deck for its time and outshines previous top tier decks for its time.
Caw-Blade has a shot against Academy in that it has some decent counterspells (including Spell Pierce, which is relevant against every card in Academy). But if we consider sideboards, Caw-Blade is perfectly capable of bringing in 4x Leyline of Sanctity, which cuts off Academy's win condition entirely.
I'm sure academy would have had a specific SB plan against leyline after SB.
Also looking at the final lists before Tolarian got banned in Standard, the deck ran 1 capsize MD and 2 more in the board.
Feel free to bid on my cards here!
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Quotes:
Golgari Aggro - feat Predator Ooze, Lotleth Troll, and Strangleroot Geist, the deck was designed to be fast, yet resilient to battle Supreme Verdict and have a removal suite vs RDW's "bombs" such as Hellrider, Thundermaw Hellkite, and Falkenrath Aristocrat in the early standard.
Izzet Blitz - a deck that uses cheap sorceries and instants to power up a Nivix Cyclops and smash face for 20 on turn 4 (ala Kiln Fiend!)
Gw Elves - ramps to Craterhoof Behemoth to swing Overrun style FTW with Gavony Township and daddy Garruk as a backup plan and inevitability.
Better and has more interaction than the current standard IMO. I think the idea of just dropping creatures early and have them sit like scaredy ducks to build up devotion and discourage trading in combat is ultra boring.
mulch+unburial rites
thragtusk+restoration angel
snapcaster mage+azorius charm
liliana of the veil+lingering souls
hellrider+thundermaw hellkite
blood artist+falkenrath aristocrat
other notable mentions fall to sphinx's rev, angel of serenity, garruk primal hunter, huntmaster of the fells, deathrite shaman, acidic slime, terminus, tamiyo.
it was a fun format with popular decks, high attendance tournaments, and no dominate deck for too long with the light exception being junk rites for a few weeks.
legacy: Doomsday, Dredge, BUG (shard less and still)
modern: storm, woo dredge, U-tron
EDH: maelstrom wanderer, Gisela, krenko, lazav, sharrum, sheoldred/xiahou dun, norin the wary, Thrax, Mimeoplasm, GW legends
It doesn't matter how powerful the deck is, it matters what the cards around it are like. Caw-blade was many times more powerful than anything around it, so that's all people played. It wasn't easy to disrupt, and had access to cards that are now legacy format staples. Even when Jace and Stoneforge were banned it was still a deck, so I don't know how you figure it was overrated.
Burning-Tree Emissary + Champion of the Parish (+ Lightning Mauler or Mayor of Avabruck or...)